Minimalism (1960s Onwards)

Definition and Meaning

Emerging in a coherent form in New York, during the 1960s, Minimal
art, popularly known as Minimalism - but also sometimes referred to
as ABC art, Cool art, Literalist art, Object art,
and Primary Structure art - was a major movement of postmodernist
art, specifically a style of abstract
painting or sculpture characterized by extreme simplicity of form: in
effect a type of visual art reduced to the essentials of geometric abstraction.
Widely exhibited in the best galleries of contemporary
art in America, it became an important style in New York and was marketed
by several dealers including Leo
Castelli. The term minimalism is usually applied to works by postmodernist
artists such as Carl Andre
(b.1935), Dan Flavin (1933-1996), Donald
Judd (1928-1994), Ellsworth
Kelly (b.1923), Sol LeWitt
(b.1928), Robert Morris
(b.1931), Kenneth Noland
(b.1924), Richard Serra
(b.1939), Tony Smith
(1912-80), and Anne Truitt (b.1933); and to paintings by Robert
Mangold (b.1937), Brice Marden (b.1938), Agnes
Martin (b.1912), and Robert Ryman (b.1930), among others.
Very often an austere, cerebral type of art,
Minimalism is sometimes associated with Conceptualism
- via the avant-garde composer John
Cage (1912-92) - and occasionally with Land
art.

Minimalism derives from the minimal geometric
forms of the Suprematist painter Kasimir
Malevich (1878-1935), exemplified in works like Black Circle (1913,
State Russian Museum, St Petersburg), and the "ready-mades"
of Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968).
Later pioneers included the Bauhaus/ Black Mountain College teacher Josef
Albers (1888-1976), noted for his Homage to the Square series,
and Ad Reinhardt (1913-67)
who finally gravitated to all-black paintings in the late 1950s. As it
was, the emergence of Minimalism was as much a reaction against the emotionalism
of Abstract Expressionism as
a culmination of a particular aesthetic. One of the first abstract
painters to be specifically linked with Minimalism was the Abstract
Expressionist Frank Stella
(b.1936), whose black "pin-stripe" paintings made a huge impact
at the 1959 art show ("16 Americans") staged by Dorothy Miller
at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Stella's minimalist works (hard-edge
painting) - following in the footsteps of earlier works by Kenneth
Noland, Robert Motherwell,
Ralph Humphrey, and Robert Ryman - were in sharp contrast to the emotional,
energy-filled paintings by Abstract Expressionists Willem de Kooning (1904-97)
or Franz Kline (1910-62).
Another influence on the development of minimalist painting was Ed
Ruscha (b.1937). (See also: Post-Painterly
Abstraction.)

Minimalism in Painting & Sculpture
- Characteristics

Minimalist paintings and sculptures are
generally composed of precise, hard-edged, geometric forms, with rigid
planes of colour pigment - typically utilizing cool hues or maybe just
one colour. They tend to consist of non-hierarchical, geometrically regular
compositions, often arranged in a grid format and made from industrial
materials. Whatever the precise details, the idea of this kind of non-objective
art is to purge the work of any external references or gestures, such
as the emotionalism of Abstract Expressionism. According to Robert Morris,
one of the most influential theorists of Minimalism, in his seminal series
of essays "Notes on Sculpture 1-3" (Artforum in 1966), the minimalist
painter or sculptor is chiefly interested how the spectator perceives
the relationship between the different parts of the work and of the parts
to the whole thing. The repetition often seen in Minimalist sculpture
is designed to highlight the subtle differences in this relationship.
An alternative approach was outlined by Donald Judd in his paper "Specific
Objects" (Arts Yearbook 8, 1965), who saw minimal art as a means
of eliminating inherited artistic values from Europe, thus creating a
new type of American
art.

The movement was heavily criticised by
a number of important art critics and
historians. For instance, Michael Fried's critical article "In Art
and Objecthood" (Artforum in June 1967), strongly criticised its
"theatricality".

Just when you thought it was safe, along
comes two more buzzwords to do with Minimalism. Are they important? Are
they worth studying? You decide. Frankly, I'm all done with minimal art.
It all sounds rather interesting but in the flesh it can be a major disappointment.
(Mind you, so can Picasso!)

Neo-Minimalism

Neo-minimalism is a rather vaguely defined
art style/movement of the late 20th, early 21st centuries, in painting,
sculpture, architecture, design, and music. It is sometimes referred to
as "neo-geo", "Neo-Conceptualism", "Neo-Futurism",
"New Abstraction", "Poptometry", "Post-Abstractionism",
"Simulationism", and "Smart Art". Contemporary artists
who are supposedly associated with the term, include David Burdeny, Catharine
Burgess, Marjan Eggermont, Paul Kuhn, Eve Leader, Tanya Rusnak, Laurel
Smith, Christopher Willard, and Time Zuck.

Postminimalism

Post-Minimalism describes attempts to go
beyond the idiom of minimalism,in architecture or the visual arts. In
simple terms, 1960s minimalism is a rather intellectual style of art characterized
by extreme simplicity of form and a deliberate lack of expressive content.
Minimalist artists were only interested in presenting a pure "idea".
In Post-Minimalism (1971 onwards), the focus shifts from the purity of
the idea, to HOW it is conveyed.